Rike Sitas

Based at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, Dr Rike Sitas is an inter-disciplinary urban scholar on the humanities side of social science, straddling sociology, human geography, cultural studies, and urban design. She leads the Culture, Technology and Society cluster and her interests sits within three interconnected areas: 1) urban cultures and just cities; 2) digital cities with a particular focus on youth and technology; and 3) experimental research methods including arts-based research, collaboration and coproduction, and intersectional feminist and queer knowledge solidarities.

Rike’s art, culture and heritage work has included projects such as Whose Heritage Matters: mapping making and mobilising which focused on the role of cultural heritage in sustainable and just development in Cape Town and Kisumu. ACT UP!: Active Citizenship through Theatre for Urban Politics is a collaborative project that explores the role of performance-based practices in interdisciplinary educational methods in Cape Town, Groningen, Tartu and Cape Town. Power Talks, a collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, critically examines the cultural, socio-spatial, political and economic practices in Sub-Saharan Africa. Imagining Impact, also a collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, explores alternative ways of thinking about socio-cultural impact within cultural funding ecosystems.

Rike’s interests in technology and cities has culminated in afrotecha.urban: youth, digital cultures and urban justice in Africa is a project focuses on youth-led, tech-enabled, urban-oriented and justice-focused experiments in African cities, including Cape Town, Cairo, Nairobi and Durban. Also focusing on cities and technology, Rike has co-led on Platform Politics and Silicon Savannahs which looks at motorcycle mobility and fintech in Cape Town, Kigali and Nairobi and Electri(city) futures looking at e-mobility and just transitions across the African continent.

Rike is committed to imaginative and justice-oriented education and convenes Masters courses Creative Cities and Place Identities and Adaptive Smart Cities, and is local faculty for the University of Carolina’s Honors Study Abroad Programme, convening a course called South African “Cityness”: urbanisation in complex contexts.